Using datafeeds for affiliate programs

Div · #1 01-Dec-2003, 09:07

One of my recent sites focuses a complete section catered by one merchant and this has led me to start work on integrating their datafeed into the web site.

Is anyone out there using datafeeds? I haven't had much luck finding any articles or posts on this and I will most likely start this project from scratch using PHP/MySql.

Any tips or ideas?

JdS · #2 01-Dec-2003, 09:17

The last time I communicated with a merchant / advertiser about their datafeed, he pointed me to this one humungous text file - that put a damper on my (very) brief foray into this idea.

This datafeed you talk about, is it in XML or simply a text file or something else?

Div · #3 01-Dec-2003, 10:53

The one I looked at was a tab delimitted text file...about 600k. It would be a manual process but the changes are usually minor.

JdS · #4 01-Dec-2003, 22:48

The next question is: Do you see yourself using the datafeed off the text file directly or would you prefer to import this datafeed into a database table for instance?

If it were up to me, I would go the way of importing it into a MySQL database table - for obvious reasons (one of them being SPEED).

If this is what you would prefer to do too, then you'd have to share the following information so I can suggest a few things:

Do you have MySQL installed in your PC and in the (remote) web server?
What MySQL version for each? Preferably, they should be the same version.
You have to ask your web host if you have permission to run a query like this? LOAD DATA INFILE "xyz_datafeed.txt" INTO TABLE `xyz_table`. But it's not totally necessary...
Can you post the first few lines off your datafeed / text file so we have some kind of idea how we will create the MySQL table.

Div · #5 02-Dec-2003, 11:38

Yeah I was thinking that putting it into a MySQL database would be the best way to go. Here are the fields I'll be dealing with.

Quote:

Product_Name Keywords Description Code Buy_URL Small_Images Large_Images Price Stock_Status Organization Team_Name Team_Short_Name Product_Type Prod_Type_Subcat

I don't think it'll be too bad...should find out when I start tonight.

Div · #6 03-Dec-2003, 13:46

Alright,

So I decided to do most of the database stuff through PHPMyadmin and so far so good. Created the table and inserted all the data...now to the next step, running some queries.

Div · #7 03-Dec-2003, 15:37

Almost done...just have to work on the formatting the output.

Div · #8 03-Dec-2003, 17:29

A few hiccups. Here my partial code for the output:

PHP Code:


while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{

echo "
<table width='500' border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0'>
<tr>
<td width='250' valign='top'><img src=$row[Small_Images] align='left' hspace='10' vspace='10' border='0' alt=\"$row[Product_Name]\"><strong><a href=$row[Buy_URL] target='_blank'>$row[Product_Name]</a></strong><br><br><strong>Price: $ $row[Price]</strong></td>
</tr>

</table>
";
}

Quote:

This produces output that looks like:

Product 1
Product 2
Prodcut 3
Product 4

So only one column, multiple rows

I am trying to reformat that as:

Product 1 | Product 2 | Product 3
Product 4 | Product 5 | Product 6

Two or three columns, multiple rows.

Any ideas on how I could do this?

JdS · #9 04-Dec-2003, 02:03

I have just the thing for you; I use it to drive the categories menu on GIDTopsites™ : http://topsites.gidhelp.com/

You need to copy and paste the PHP class below and filename it, HGtable.lib.php

PHP Code:


<?php
/* *  AUTHOR      :  J de Silva
   *  WEBSITE     :  www.desilva.biz
   *  EMAIL       :  scripts[at]desilva[dot]biz
   *  COPYRIGHT   :  Gen.I Designs
   *  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
   *  FILE        :  /../includes/classes/HGtable.lib.php
   *  DATE        :  October 25th, 2002
   *  VERSION     :  
   *  ABOUT       :  HG = HTML Generator?  table = generates
                                       a HTML table!
   *  _________________________________________ */
class HGtable
{
        var $attrs;
        var $blank_cell;
        var $data_array;
        var $html;
        var $ttl_cols;
        var $ttl_data;
        var $ttl_rows;
        
        function HGtable()
        {
            register_shutdown_function( array($this, '_close') );
            $this->data_array        =    array();
            // default settings...
            $this->attrs['td']    =    '';
            $this->attrs['tr']    =    '';
            $this->blank_cell        =    '&nbsp;';
        }
        
        function addData( $cell_data )
        {
            $this->data_array[]    =    $cell_data;
            unset( $cell_data );
        }
        
        function getHTML()
        {
            $this->ttl_rows    = $this->_calc_rows();
            $this->_add_blank_cells_2_data_array();
            for( $tr=0; $tr<$this->ttl_rows; $tr++ )
            {
                $this->html    .=    '  <tr'.$this->attrs['tr'].">\r\n";
                    for( $td=0; $td<$this->ttl_cols; $td++ )
                    {
                        $this->html    .=    '    <td'.$this->attrs['td'].'>'.$this->_insert_cell_data()."</td>\r\n";
                    }
                $this->html    .=    "  </tr>\r\n";
            }
            unset( $tr, $td );
            return( $this->html );
        }
        
        function setBlankCell( $html )
        {
            $this->blank_cell    =    $html;
        }
        
        function setTagATTR( $tag, $attr )
        {
            $this->attrs[ $tag ]    =    ' '.$attr;
            unset( $tag, $attr );
        }
        
        function setTTLCOLS( $int )
        {
            $this->ttl_cols    =    intval( $int );
            unset( $int );
        }
        
        function _add_blank_cells_2_data_array()
        {
            $ttl_blank_cells    =    ( $this->ttl_rows * $this->ttl_cols ) - $this->ttl_data;
            if( $ttl_blank_cells )
            {
                for( $i=0; $i<$ttl_blank_cells; $i++ )
                {
                    $this->data_array[]    =    $this->blank_cell;
                }
                unset( $i );
            }
            unset( $ttl_blank_cells );
        }
        
        function _calc_rows()
        {
            $this->ttl_data    =    sizeof( $this->data_array );
            return( ceil($this->ttl_data / $this->ttl_cols) );
        }
        
        function _close()
        {
            unset( $this );
        }
        
        function _insert_cell_data()
        {
            $td = current( $this->data_array );
            @next( $this->data_array );
            return( $td );
        }   
}
?>

Then in your script example above, edit the bit to something like this:

PHP Code:


<?php
include_once( '/path/to/HGtable.lib.php' );
$tbl = new HGtable();
// how many columns in the table?
$tbl->setTTLCOLS( 2 );
// set any attribute for the <td> tag below
$tbl->setTagATTR( 'td', 'style="width:250px;vertical-align:top"' );
// set how the extra / blank cells will look like...
$tbl->setBlankCell( '<strong>Nothing Here</strong>' );
// start the table
echo '<table style="width:500px;border-collapse:collapse;border:none;">'."\r\n";
while( $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result) )
{
    $tbl->addData( "<img src=$row[Small_Images] align='left' hspace='10' vspace='10' border='0' alt=\"$row[Product_Name]\" />".
                                    "<strong><a href=$row[Buy_URL] target='_blank'>$row[Product_Name]</a></strong><br />".
                                    "<br />".
                                    "<strong>Price: $ $row[Price]</strong>" );
}
// complete the table generation... 
$rows    = $tbl->getHTML();
echo $rows;
// close the table
echo '</table>';
?>

Div · #10 04-Dec-2003, 11:52

Much nicer than my counter based try. Thanks.

ps - you should put this in the PHP library...cause I actually checked.

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Using datafeeds for affiliate programs

Import the text file into MySQL